Even the most half-assed celebrity property watchers among us know that in late March of this year (2014), just six or so short months after the newly constructed estate in the guard-gated and celebrity-dotted Brentwood Country Estates enclave appeared in all its Old World (inspired) architecture meets state-of-the-art luxury glory in the glossy pages of Architectural Digest, the almost painfully pretty pair heaved the property on the open market to a tsunami of tongue wagging and ballyhoo with an official asking price of $50,000,000.

How much did Your Mama hear Mister Dr. Dre agreed to pay for the quarterback and the supermodel's posh property? Well, children, we can't confirm or deny the veracity of the dirt, but good ol' Peter Propertyseller, a trusted tattletale if there ever was one, told Your Mama that word on the Platinum Triangle real estate street is that the deal is set to go down for forty or maybe even $48 million. (Feel free to take a moment and/or take a deep slug of a stiff cocktail of your choice.)

In case any of you people thing this entrepreneurial fella can't afford a forty-something million dollar house, well, guess again, buckaroos, he can. The Forbes folk recently estimated Mister Dr. Dre holds down a net worth of $550 million. In other words the man is sick rich and well on his way to billionairedom. So rich, indeed, that he can probably seriously consider, as he told the people at celebrity juggernaut TMZ he was, the purchase of the the L.A. Clippers basketball team when the powers that be at the N.B.A. force owner Donald Sterling, along with a lifetime banishment, to sell the franchise as punishment for a private but recorded, leaked and overtly racist conversation he had with his much younger and—in a deeply satisfying and quixotic twist—multi-ethnic former mistress. You can't make this stuff up, children. Anyways...

Even before they made their union legal in the eyes of God and government in 2009, Mister Brady and Miz Bündchen paid $11.75 million in the late summer of 2008 for the then undeveloped 3.63 acre parcel that's just up the curved street from the home of action flick muscle man and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They engaged the in-demand services of renown L.A.-based architect and mansion specialist Richard Landry to custom-design a roomy and sumptuous residence for their expanding family. (They have two young children together and a Mister Brady has a son from a previous relationship.)

Official digital marketing materials show the imported limestone-faced chateau was completed in 2011 and has five bedrooms and nine bathrooms. Listing details go on about the "Old World European architecture" and the "state of the art amenities." Presumably it was an instant patina of dignity and history that was sought—some might argue successfully—from the estate's bevy of top quality materials that include vintage ceiling beams, antique floorboards and doors, salvaged ceramic tiles and bricks, marble fireplace surrounds, Vermont slate roof tiles, zinc gutters, and reclaimed cobblestones.

There as been a bit of confusion and discussion about how big this house actually is. In Architectural Digest (Oct., 2013) it was described as 14,000 square feet. However, many people think it looks much larger and, indeed, it has frequently been described in not always flattering media reports as weighing in at a more mega 20,000 square feet. (Miz Bündchen sits on the board of the Rainforest Alliance, was named Harvard's Global Environmental Citizen in 2011, and she's a designated Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). So, some people thought it came off as a little excessive and maybe even hypocritical for a woman who so loudly and globally espouses the benefits of environmental sensitivity to build such a large home for her family of four/five, even if the damn thing is equipped with a few dozen solar panels on the roof.)

For the record, at least as the record exists for the L.A. Building Code people and the Los Angeles County Tax Man, the mansard-roofed main manse has a total of 11,230 square feet of interior living space with another other 2,516 in loggias, terraces and balconies. There is also, according to listing details, a 1,590 square foot fitness facility—the looks of which scares the bejeezis out of this lazy property gossip, a 135 square foot pool bath, a 1,360 square foot parking garage, a 630 square foot basement with mechanical equipment and another 837 square feet of loggias, terraces and covered walkways. All together, the indoor and outdoor living spaces—including the garage—total 18,298 square feet. Iffin we were the betting type, and we're not, we'd wager both our long bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, that the 18,298 square foot number on file with the city and the county is probably how the rumored and generously rounded up figure of 20,000 square feet got started.

Mister Dr. Dre, clearly a bit of a real estate size queen, owns a couple of other rather large homes in Los Angeles that include (but are not limited to) a nearly 14,000 square foot mansion in Woodland Hills bought May 1999 $2.375 million and an 8,800 -plus square foot ocean front abode on Malibu's swanky Carbon Beach scooped up in October 2000 for $4,750,000. (In 2011/2012 the Mister Dr. Dre's beach shack was listed with little fanfare, first for $11 million and later for $12.5 million.)

Some of y'all may recall that in the latter days of 2011 Mister Dr. Dre shelled out $15,400,000 for an almost 10,000 square foot on a prominent promontory in the so-called Bird Street's 'hood high above the Sunset Strip. According to our dear Peter Propertyseller, that house is being surreptitiously shopped as a whisper listing with a $35,000,000 asking price. No babies, that is not a boozy typo. Peter really said $35 million.

As for Mister Brady and Miz Bündchen, apparently they're headed back east, from whence they came, to the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline where they're in the process of constructing a custom mansion similarly sized and equipped as the one in Los Angeles they're (allegedly) about to sell to Dr. Dre for an impressive price.

Just as an aside...The first thing Your Mama said to Peter Propertyseller when he passed along this delicious celebrity real estate canard was, "Shut up!" When we told real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak she screeched, "I just fainted!" And quickly followed with, "Heidi Klum is pissed." (Miz Klum, herself a top-level supermodel in her day and nowadays an honest-to-goodness reality t.v. queen, purchased new digs last year and, hence, has her former mansion, a 12,000+ square foot pseudo-Tuscan villa that's all but directly across the private road from the Brady-Bundchens, available as a whisper listing with an asking price—so this property gossip hears—of $20,000,000. Maybe she should raise the price?)listing photos: Westside Estate Agency (via Curbed)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Right about the time she inked an exclusive (and probably lucrative) deal to with 20th Century Fox Television in late Feb/early March (2014), according to Yolanda Yakketyyak, well-regarded television writer/producer Anna Fricke and her writer/producer hubby Jeremy Carver also inked a deal to buy a multi-million dollar residence in the Hollywood foothills. The sellers of the privately situated hillside spread, as per property records, were two-time Oscar-nominated movie producer Richard Gladstein and his wife Lauri.*

Your Mama's online research shows this estate-in-the-making must have been a hot property because it was listed in late January (2014) and sold just six short weeks later for $3,405,000, a somewhat shocking $506,000 over the $2.899 million asking price. (Didn't we tell y'all yesterday while discussing Meryl Streep's L.A. residence that the multi-million dollar market in Los Angeles is almost irrationally brisk? Anyhoo...)

Listing details show the Colonialesque Craftsman sits high on a half-plus acre lot on a private, gated street just above Hollywood Boulevard. The house was originally built in 1902, as per marketing materials and the L.A. County Tax Man, and has obviously been updated and upgraded over the last 100+ years. The humble-faced (if undeniably pricey and even a bit luxurious) 3,258 square foot house has been updated and upgraded and currently contains three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

A black top drive sweeps up to a narrow plateau below the house and wide, shrub-lined brick steps ascend to the front door. As is customary in a house of this architectural milieu, formal living and dining rooms flack and center hall entry. The L-shaped formal living room has wood floors, a pitched ceiling sheathed in ship lath, and a cozy extension dominated and solidly anchored by a stone-faced wood-burning fireplace bracketed by narrow book shelves that, regrettably, reach almost but not quite to the ceiling.

The formal dining room, also with wood floors, has a nearly room wide multi-paned window with built-in bench seat. The sellers fearlessly mixed classically modern—white, molded plastic Panton and Saarinen chairs—with classically traditional—a Fortuny light fixture—with a whiff of the ancient and intellectual—a slightly disturbing knot of hand-carved figurines that may or may not be older than brand new and just may have been bought at some place like Pier One or World Market.

A relatively compact den/media lounge has a built-in entertainment unit with—one imagines—state-of-the-art a/v equipment and lots of shelf storage for CDs, DVDs, Blu Ray discs or whatevuh-whatevuh. There are side-lit French doors that open to a verdant sweep of garden and chevron pattern used brick floors, which Your Mama really enjoys. We also enjoy (and covet) the black and white chevron pattern rug and would happily have lay it down on the concrete-floor of our private office any day of the week. None-the-less, we feel dizzy from the cacophonous visual complexity created by that rug on that floor material. (Or maybe it's this morning's the Bloody Mary that's making Your Mama's eyes cross? But that's really neither here not there, is it?)

The wood floors in the front hall and formal living and dining rooms extends into a sunny and spacious combination kitchen/casual dining/family room where two long walls of floor-to-ceiling French doors open to green gardens. The cook-friendly center island kitchen has snow white Shaker-style cabinetry with glass-fronted uppers for in-your-face dish ware display, top-grade white-faced commercial-style appliances, and a melon colored tile back splash that we're certain will not resonate positively with more than a few of the children. The counter tops are impressively thick slabs of unknown material that Your Mama imagines all by themselves cost more than the housekeeper's late model Hyundai.

There are two guest/family bedrooms with en suite facilities on the second floor along with a city view master suite complete with separate, glass-wrapped sun porch and a fitted walk in closet. The attached master bathroom is well turned out in vintage style with honeycomb tile on the floors, white subway tiles half way up the walls, twin pedestal sinks surmounted by oval mirrors, and a claw-footed bathtub.

Although there's more than plenty of room for one, the property does not currently have a swimming pool. (It does, however, have a detached two-car garage.) Your Mama isn't so sure we'd want to spend almost $3.5 million for a house tucked up behind a bunch of ho-hum apartment complexes in Hollywood that does not even have a swimming pool. Then again, if you can spend $3.5 million for a house you probably can afford another couple hundred grand to install of killer custom swimming pool, right?

Some of the other homes in the immediate 'hood are owned, as per property records and other online resources, by Dame Helen Mirren, German-born filmmaker Roland Emmerich, art world mandarin Margo Leavin, four-time Emmy nominated producer/director Tony Krantz and American oil heiress/yoga instructor Normandie Keith.*Miz Fricke made a name for herself writing for the show Dawson's Creek back in the early Aughts and has gone on to write and/or produce for Everwood, Men in Trees, and the American adaptation of Being Human. Mister Carver's writer/producer credits include the sci-fi series Supernatural and the American adaptation of Being Human. Mister Gladstein's impressive list of producing credits include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Cider House Rules, The Bourne Identity, and Finding Neverland.listing photos: Deasy Penner & Partners

Monday, April 28, 2014

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although she bought the damn thing barely minute ago—in late Jan./early Feb. of 2013 to be more precise—prodigiously talented and gloriously faux-humble superstar actress Meryl Streep has put very contemporary home she owns (via trust) above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, CA, on the open market, we first heard from one of the gals at Redfin, fully furnished with an asking price of $6,750,000.

Property records for and Your Mama's May 2013 dissection of the boxy and voluminous abode show the Sunset Strip residence last sold for $4.5 million. According to Your Mama's rudimentary calculations the current asking price of $6.75 million represents a fat and aggressive 50% increase in proposed value, less what ever amount applies to the houseful of top quality (if generically and inoffensively modern) contemporary furnishings. Listen, puppies, as ludicrous as that inflated figure might sound to some of y'all, this jaded property gossip recommends y'all don't get yer property pantaloons in an indignant twist before the chickens hatch. The multi-million dollar market in Los Angeles is brisk (and often speculative) and no one—and we mean no one—ought to be the least surprised if Miz Streep's real estate agent manages to find a deep-pocketed person who will gladly shell out an amount very close to the current price tag.

Current listing details show the 3,500 square foot residence has a fortress-like street façade and a total of four bedrooms and four sybaritic bathrooms with custom LED lighting schemes. There are Italian marble tile floors, vast expanses of glass that look out to a variety of patios and courtyards, an open-tread walnut wood staircase with sculptural railing, and numerous skylights that bathe to house in ambient natural light.

A discreet and secured gate near the front-facing two-car attached garage opens into a partially enclosed stairway that ascends to the front door. Inside the open concept main floor living space includes a partly double-height living room area with full-height rough hewn stone wall with fireplace and an adjoining formal dining area. The boxy and sleek kitchen is appointed with all the top grade whathaveyous (i.e. full-height wine cooler) that can and be expected of a nearly seven million dollar house above the Sunset Strip and opens over a center island to a compact informal dining area and a family room with built-in entertainment wall. A half-flight of stairs up from the family room is a flexi-use room—think home office or meditation chamber—with a full wall of glass that overlooks the swimming pool.

The elevated, walled and gated front yard serves as the primary outdoor entertainment and recreation area with a plunge-sized swimming pool and attached spa, big enough sunbathing terrace and a lounge area with what appears to be a chunky, low-profile built-in fire pit.

Listing details make a point to point out there is a smartphone controlled state-of-the-art security monitoring system and that looky-loos will not be tolerated as the property will only, with no exception, be shown by appointment to pre-qualified clients.

Miz Streep and her long-time husband, sculptor Don Gummer, have long owned a nearly 90 acre multi-residence compound in bucolic and historic Litchfield County, CT, and since 2006 have maintained a $10,000,000+ penthouse in in the same lower Manhattan complex where consciously uncoupling Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin also own an apartment.listing photos: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The property gossip gal at The New York Post revealed over the weekend that engaged May-December duo Mary-Kate Olsen and her much older French-born banker fiancée Olivier Sarkozy—he's the younger half-brother of France's former president Nicolas Sarkozy—snatched up an historic townhouse in "out-of-the-way Turtle Bay," a tiny neighborhood wedged tightly between the ever-taller towers of Midtown and the highly secured United Nations complex along the East River.

The townhouse, part of the illustrious Turtle Bay Gardens enclave, was sold, according to online resources, in mid-April (2014) for $13.5 million after first hitting the open market the previous April with a $16.5 million price tag.

In the late 19-teens, blue-blooded American heiress Charlotte Martin, enamored of the private gardens she visited in London, Paris and Rome, purchased 20 back-to-back mid-block townhouses on the then and arguably still unfashionable East 48th and Eat 49th Streets. She thoroughly remodeled the houses, carved out a verdant, 12-foot wide shared garden promenade at the rear of the residences, and christened the micro-neighborhood Turtle Bay Gardens.

Naturally, Miz Martin kept one of the larger townhouses for herself and sold the majority of the other to friends and associates. Later residents of Turtle Bay Gardens are said to include Showbusiness icon Katherine Hepburn (244 E. 49th Street), music industry legend Bob Dylan (242 E. 49th), musical theater royal Stephen Sondheim, and actor/playwright Garson Kanin and his Oscar-winning actress wife Ruth Gordon.

Miz Martin passed on to the other side in 1961 and before long the house was acquired by psychiatrist, philanthropist, art collector, and Standard Oil heir Dallas B. Pratt. (Mister Pratt, according to June 2013 report on the property in The Wall Street Journal, added the elevator and carved a one-car garage out of what was originally a much larger kitchen.) Mister Pratt willed the townhouse to the American Museum in Britain, which he founded, and the trustees of the museum eventually sold the house in 1997 for $2.45 million to now deceased ad agency founder turned abstract painter David Deutsch. (Mister Deutsch's son is well-known advertising executive and outspoken television personality Donny Deutsch.)

Listing details and other resources available on the internets reveal the quirky and elaborately dressed townhouse extends a generous and rare 38 feet wide and stands five floors above ground with an additional basement level. Your Mama counted on the floor plan included with digital marketing materials three bedrooms (plus plenty of room for two, three or even four more) and two full and three half bathrooms. Listing details call out seven fireplaces and the aforementioned and much-coveted private single-car garage with direct entry to the house through the kitchen.

In addition to the garage and the long, narrow and dark seeming galley style kitchen, the ground floor includes a tiny entry vestibule between the front door and the elevator shaft, a roomy reception foyer with powder pooper and direct access to the kitchen, a bi-level dining/sitting room anchored on either end by fireplaces, and a garden/family room lined with arched windows that give way to a private garden space with fountain and entrance into the common garden promenade.

The second floor, or the piano nobile, offers a tight landing (with convenient if window-free second powder pooper), a discrete (and discreet) street-facing parlor for intimate tête-à-têtes, and a paneled, bookcase-lined library. French doors in the library open to an sizable roof terrace with an external staircase to the lower courtyard garden. A short and properly decadent hall of antique smoked mirrors links the second floor landing to an impressively capacious double-height drawing room/ballroom that's at least 40 feet long with a 22-foot carved wood and hand stenciled ceiling. There are windows at both ends for proper cross ventilation, two fireplaces, built-in bookcases that reach up to the stenciled frieze, and a walk-in wet bar/pantry that will make booze hounds and snack lovers like Your Mama swoon with delight and envy.

Two bedrooms on the third floor share a roomy Jack 'n' Jill style bathroom with an unexpected curved wall and the fourth floor is given over entirely to a lofty, partly double-height open-concept atelier with sitting room and (convenient) third half bathroom. Should Mister Sarkozy and Miss Olsen choose they could easily divide up the space to accommodate two, three or even four additional bedrooms.

The master suite privately occupies the entire top floor but, it should be noted vis-à-vis the floor plan included with digital marketing materials, if one takes the elevator up to the top floor rather than the stairs one must less-than-ideally traipse through the dressing area and bathroom to get to the actual bedroom. French doors open from the bedroom to a stunning stone-columned loggia that looks into the tree-tops of the shared central garden. The main part of the master bathroom opens to an unusual, slope-roofed space with tiny tiles on some walls and the ceiling and an above ground exercise pool, not shown in listing photos but photographed for the June 2013 article in WSJ.

Back on the ground floor both the formal dining room and the garden/family room open to an enclosed garden courtyard with a minimalist-minded water feature that forces a taut frisson with the classical architecture of the townhouse.

This is not, avid celebrity real estate watchers already know, the first townhouse the French-born banker and his former child star turned high brow fashion world darling fiancée have purchased together in New York City. In August 2012 the May-December couple—he's 44 and she's 27—shelled out $6.25 million for a somewhat shabby, 19th-century row house in the increasingly gentrified East Village. They never moved into the fixer upper and re-listed it about a year later, in July 2103, for $6.995 million and sold in early January (2014) for $6.4 million to multi-disciplinary artist Aaron Young and fashion world insider (and Miami Beach shop owner) Laure Heriard Dubreuil.

Prior to getting with pint-sized Miss Olsen, 6'3" Mister Sarkozy was married to Charlotte Bernard, a writer from a prominent French family who famously called her ex-husband's relationship with Miss Olsen "grotesque." (He also hooked up with the also much younger art world scion Stella Schnabel, daughter of Julian, before settling down with Miss Olsen.) Mister Sarkozy and Miz Bernard, parents to two children, owned a four story and fully modernized early 20th-century townhouse on East 75h Street on the Upper East Side they bought in 2005 for $6.5 million from the estate of world renown photographer Richard Avedon. The couple split in 2010 and the house was sold, presumably as part of the couple's parting of marital ways, in early 2012 for $8.4 million to media honcho Kevin Wendle. Mister Wendle almost immediately caught a case of The Real Estate Fickle and flipped the house back on the market just six months later for $12.5 million and sold it, according to property records, in August 2013 for $11.4 million to an unknown buyer.

Friday, April 25, 2014

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It had been a while since Your Mama had heard word from real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak. As that sassy queen Miss Quad from Married to Medicine would say, "She is verrah bizzy, honey, verrah bizzy, indeed!" Yesterday, praise whatever you praise, the recently elusive but ever-reliable tattletale sent a missive by invisible pigeon to let Your Mama know that New York City-based Oscar-nominated actress Lorraine Bracco somewhat unexpectedly bought a house on the Left Coast. Miz Bracco can do whatever she wants. And we mean that with honest respect, of course. But she seems like a real damn Noo Yawka and Your Mama, perhaps unfairly, just can't see her fitting comfortably in the sunny, plastic hills and LaLa Land. It's a little bit like snow skiing naked. It's doable, but do your really want to do that? Anyways...

Miz Bracco—who for years kept and may still keep, for all we know, a rented place in the same New York City building where Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter lived for years in un-wedded bliss (or whatever)—has tooled around Tinseltown since the early 1980s. In 1990 she was cast in the Martin Scorsese-directed mobster movie Goodfellas, a role that earned her an Oscar nomination and in the late 1990s she popped up as mobster psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi on The Sopranos, a plum role for which she was nominated for four Emmys and four Golden Globes. (Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.) In 2011 she was again cast in a mob-related television series (I Married a Mobster)—anyone else see a pattern here?—and for the last four or so years she's shaken her money maker as a quirky cafe owner/blogger on the female-driven police procedural Rizzoli & Isles, soon to air its fifth season.

Yolanda did much of the leg work on this one, bless her perfectly preserved puss and stented heart, but Your Mama none-the-less spent a few minutes on the internets and confirmed that in early April (2014), via a corporate entity she controls, Miz Bracco quietly shelled out $1.62 million for a renovated, 1960s residence perched just above the Sunset Strip where it enjoys—on a clear day—all but unobstructed city to sea views.

Listing details show the two-story hillside house was originally built in 1962 and has been completely updated and upgraded in a mostly but only semi- modern manner. There are just two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms in 1,872 square feet and, like many houses in the hills of Hollywood, Miz Bracco's new West Coast outpost sits hard up on a windy and narrow street. A two-car garage and a high, featureless wall with secured gate present a forbidding and private face to the street as they enclose a slim, flagstone paved entry courtyard.

Inside the gate, a wide bank of glass panels and a glass front door exposes a small but light and airy entry with a descending staircase. It's a few short steps past the kitchen into an unfortunately low-ceilinged but unexpectedly expansive combination living/dining area fitted and kitted with gleaming yellow-toned hardwoods, an asymmetrical fireplace with minimalist surround, and a continuous ribbon of floor-to-ceiling windows that provide a sweeping view over Los Angeles.

Next to the main living area a wide, galley style kitchen has stone-like tile floors that Your Mama feels are inappropriate for this house and a full suite of high-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances. Counter tops are of unknown material that may or may not be some sort of tile and the un-painted Shaker style oak cabinetry probably cost a small fortune but—we have to be honest—just don't feel quite right for the house.

Both bedrooms are downstairs and one has a fireplace flanked by bookshelves plus a full wall of fitted wardrobes and an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass sliders open to a veranda. The adjacent and spacious bathroom also has a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. Those big ol' windows might be a real wow factor and really let the sun shine in but they won't be so cute when Miz Bracco or one of her overnight house guests forgets to pull the shades and steps out of the shower or pads into the bathroom in the their birthday suit and there's the immigrant gardener watering plants on the veranda. Awkward!

The other bedroom does not have a fireplace, as far as we can tell, but does open through glass sliders to the same veranda as the other bedroom. A private, adjoining study/dressing room connects the bedroom and the small but efficiently arranged bathroom where listing photos show a well-ventilated, semi-private cubby for the crapper and a glass-doored and tile-lined steam shower.

Some of the home's extra-special upgrades include electronic window coverings—handy since the setting sun could scorch the interiors of this house, a surround sound system, a comprehensive security system including surveillance cameras and intercoms, and custom-fitted closets in both bedrooms.

Due to the precipitous slope of the parcel, outdoor space is limited to the slender, flagstone paved walled entry courtyard at the front and a lower level veranda off the bedrooms that stretches the width of the residence.

Your Mama first (and briefly) discussed Miz Bracco's real estate doings back in January 2007 when she listed her approximately 4,500 square foot house in Bridgehampton, NY, with an asking price of $3.25 million. She paid $1.6 million for the private property in the fall of 2004 and property records show she still owns it—and again in February 2007 when she listed a celebrity pedigreed property in the scenic and celebrity-approved enclave of Snedens Landing for $3.2 million. Miz Bracco and her then boyfriend, Oscar-nominated actor Harvey Keitel, bought the Hudson River front property from soo-blime Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn. Miz Bracco finally unloaded the property in August 2009 for $2.7 million to Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio.listing photos: Horizon Realty

Thursday, April 24, 2014

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: This morning Your Mama awoke to a kindly communique from a fancy-schmancy P.R. lady in London who thoughtfully let us know via press release that His Not-Actually-Royal Music Industry Highness Prince put an characteristically lavish estate he owns in Marbella—that's on the Mediterranean coast in the south of Spain for all the geographically challenged—up for sale with an asking price of £4,613,800. (Our currency conversion contraption indicates that amount equals, €5,5,609,420, $7,753,080 or 15,973 Bitcoins.)

So goes the story as told in the press release, Mister Prince originally acquired the hill topping estate in 1998 as a wedding gift for his then wife, Mayte Garcia. Their intertwined monograms appear throughout the property, which may or may not thrill the next owner, and there is an "enormous portrait of the couple in the main hall." (That isn't something everyone wants prominently displayed in their foyer, a posed portrait of Prince and his first wife? No?) The press release goes on to say that after the sudden death of his week-old son and the subsequent breakdown of his marriage, Mister Prince, "resolved never to set foot in the house again." Miz Mayte, on the other hand, apparently made "occasional use of it at weekends."*

Online listing details show the two-story, flesh-toned and marble balustraded villa sits down a long private drive on a 5,900 square meter parcel—that's about 1.46 acres as per Your Mama's rudimentary tabulations—west of Marbella in the wealthy hills of El Paraíso. (A smokey-voice real estate agent gives a video tour of the property here.)

There are a total of six bedrooms and six bathrooms, according to online marketing materials, including five guest bedrooms and an unrevealed number of bathrooms on the upper level. The celebrity-sized master suite—not pictured in listing photos we perused—sprawls across two levels and is entered through what listing details rather curiously call a "fantasy door." That's right, a fantasy door. There's a canopied bed with—as one might imagine—a lurid and achingly cliche mirrored ceiling and the bathroom—at least we think it's the master bathroom—is sheathed floor and walls with a grey-veined blush pink marble. The bathroom is way too showy for Your Mama's far less glitzy personal taste in crapper day-core, but the color and veining of that marble is kind of special. Anyways...

There are, as per listing details, lustrous marble floors and air conditioning throughout the main floor living spaces that include a pretty nearly histrionic, many-sided double-height entrance hall—it could have eight or even ten sides, we can't quite tell—that features a double staircase with marble balustrades and what appears to be a bridge that traverses the voluminous space.

A series of tall, arched French doors in the sunny and glitzy formal dining room and the (unfortunately also flesh-toned) formal living room as well as the adjoining breakfast room open to large terraces with panoramic views that sweep over hills and valleys to the shimmery blue of the Mediterranean in the distance. The almost clinically unadorned kitchen looks fully Euro-contemporary with a rigorously adhered to white and crimson color scheme, glossy cabinets with nary a pull to be seen, and high-grade stainless steel appliances.

The entire property is ringed by a high wall and a dense row of cypress trees and is fitted and kitted with a comprehensive security system that includes both outdoor and indoor surveillance cameras because, children, Prince don't fool around when it comes to security, even at a residence he swore never to step foot in again. Other luxuries and amenities include a dedicated security room, a generator, water tanks, irrigation system, private water well, an elaborate lighting program both indoors and out, and, somewhere up in there, a two-chair hair and make-up salon.

The landscaped grounds include roomy, balustraded terraces that overlook a heated swimming pool, a palm dotted gentle slope of well watered lawn, and an open-air cabana tucked into a shady spot at the edge of the yard. Listing details also call out a tennis court but this property gossip would probably vomit with flabbergast to learn Mister Prince actually used the damn thing to play tennis. What, pray tell, does a marvelously theatrical creature like Prince wear to play tennis? Custom-made high-heeled sneakers and a deep purple, self-wicking chador?

Mister Prince has probably owned a number of glammy residences all over the globe but he makes his home in the affluent suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. In Chanhassen he owns a couple of adjoining lake-front parcels where there was once a purple house called Purple House where some say his father lived and that was razed in 2003. He owns another couple of adjacent parcels in Chanhassen where a house once stood and also appears to have been razed. Also in his property portfolio, a modest house on a leafy street in Chanhassen, the famous Paisley Park Studio complex (also in Chanhassen) plus a couple more fairly humble houses on the western edge of Minneapolis proper.

*Something about that timeline just doesn't seem quite right since Mister Prince and Miz Mayte were married in 1996, their infant son—may he rest in peace—died in 1996, and they announced their divorce in 1998, the same year the press release says he purchased the place as a wedding present. But anyways...listing photos: LuxuryEstate.com

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Some of y'all may have already read on Luxuo or Habitually Chic or Domaine or Curbed that enigmatic French actress Catherine Deneuve hoisted her Directoire-style late 18th-century chateau near Guainville, about 75 kilometers west of Paris—that's about 47 miles for all us metric system eschewing Americans—up for sale with an official prix of €3,990,000. (A quick consult with Your Mama's handy-dandy currency conversion contraption shows that equals 5,506,400 U.S. dollars at today's rates and 11,255.94 Bitcoins.)

Your Mama can't resist having a go at Miz Devenuve's chateau because this, buckeroos and pussy willows, this ain't one of those frustratingly ubiquitous, crazy ass faux-chateaus we're always dissin' and discussin' around here. Chateau de Primard is the real damn deal. This is how one does a French chateau, children, and some of those people in Beverly Park (and elsewhere) ought to take note.

Digital listings reveal the sublimey patinated chateau, about an hour from the Arc de Triomphe says one listing, was given a (probably insensitive) overhaul in the 1960s but has since "undergone significant restoration" of the chateau's "original character." Inside, the rooms appear generously proportioned without being vulgar and, although a bit dowdy here and there, we are certain Your Mama's Euro-centric and eagle-eyed chum Adrienne The Greek would swoon dramatically for the original floor tiles and emphatically affirm the un-fussy day-core as "absolutely correct," and/or "just as it should be." What need, after all, does a cinema icon like Catherine Deneuve have to try to impress with, say, a perfectly calibrated multi-million dollar overhaul spearheaded by famously autocratic architect Thierry Despont or a quintessentially and chicly Frenchified decorative scheme by Jacque Grange? That's right, none is the answer to that question.

Current digitally accessible marketing materials show the dignified and essentially symmetrical, four floor edifice sits on about 18 hectares—about 44 acres—up against the Eure river and contains a total of 1,200 square meters, somewhere right around 13,000 square feet. Ground floor living and reception spaces include a large sitting room, a sitting room-boudoir—whatever that is, a library, formal dining room, and a 50 square meter—about 540 square feet—kitchen.

On the second floor—more commonly known to Europeans (and others) as the first floor—encompasses a 700-ish square foot master suite, two more guest/family bedrooms with a shared bathroom, an additional guest suite, and an "annex bedroom, whatever that is.

There's a second, approximately 700 square foot master suite on the third floor plus two children's bedrooms, another guest suite, laundry facilities, and a "bathroom and a restroom," whatever that means. Listing details also mention something called a "70 m2 sauna suite." Your Mama's just gonna assume that means a 750-ish square foot health and wellness suite complete with massage treatment space, fitness facilities, maybe a mani-pedi station and/or a built-in hair washing bowl, and, of course, a sauna. Tucked up into the eaves in the "Beautifully converted" attic there's a "relaxation room," whatever that is, and a "home cinema."

The grounds, redesigned by celebrated landscape architect Jacques Witz, include sculpted hedges and trees, vast lawns, and stone terraces. Somewhere there's some sort of farm component or petting zoo because listing photos include one of a group of farm animals, a couple of sheep, some goats, what looks like a miniature horse or pony, and a cute little big-eared ass. Next to the rectangular swimming pool that's sunk simply into a hedge-girdled patch of lawn below the house is a colorful statue of Homer and Marge Simpson sitting on a sofa. Well, children, we're not sure we can totally support that particular eccentricity but we live, hunties, for an unexpected and funny-freaky flash of any homeowner's unfettered individuality on display in such a loud and proud way. Does that even make sense?

We have no idea what Miz Deneuve's future real estate plans hold so let's digress for a moment, shall we? One of Your Mama's favorite and very probably not true stories about Miz Deneuve has nothing to do with real estate. Ages ago, back in the late 1900s, Your Mama and our charmingly loose cannon bestie Fiona Trambeau flew steerage to London to visit Fiona's cousin—let's call him Mister Crownfallsout, and his life-long man-friend who we'll call him Freddy Fussbudget even though he really doesn't figure much into the story.

After a thrilling week in London doing all the things one does in London and getting completely turned around on the Tube more times than we'd ever confess, Your Mama, Fiona and Mister Crownfallsout hopped on the Chunnel for a few days in Paris. It wasn't our first time on the Chunnel, thank you very much, but it's a feat of derring-do that never fails to impress this jaded property gossip.

Anyways, one cool February evening in Paris—it was cool and it was February—we haphazardly landed in a street-side cafe in the over-so-trendy Marais where we proceeded to tipple more than a few back. Mister Crownfallsout, a never ending fountain of arcane (and very probably not true) details about the lives of famous and not famous people, swore on his next door neighbor's dog that Catherine Deneuve, already then a woman of a certain age, looked so damn good because she has gold filament running throughout her face. Whenever her this sags a little or her that gets to drooping she—or her physician or whomever—simply roots around in her hair until they locate the necessary filament and give it wee twist at its end. Voilá! Up go the fallen ramparts of Miz Deneuve's face.

It's horrible and probably enough to send a person to hell but, needless to say, we thought we'd died. Fiona spit up her escargot. She did! Who had ever heard of such a thing? Not us, at least. Of course we have no way of knowing if it's true but the beauty of the thing is that as outrageous as it sounds it's totally plausible in a Brazil sort of way.* Beauty—or "beauty" if you prefer—is such and ugly business, isn't it? But anyways, there we go digressing into a booze-fueled nostalgia.*If any of y'all didn't understand that reference to the dystopian masterpiece Brazil, you're probably young enough to be Your Mama's grandbaby.exterior listing photos: Sotheby's International Realtyinterior listing photos: Winkworth

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

We first heard about it from the fellow at the always well-researched San Fernando Valley Blog but it was celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ who revealed a couple weeks ago already—and Your Mama completely missed it—that uni-named R&B/hip hop entertainer and producer Akon dropped $1,950,000 for a concrete and glass contemporary in the sort of unlikely and hot as Hades Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.

Listing details show the 4,028 square foot two-story house was built in 2004 on nearly half an acre with five bedrooms and six bathrooms. At the time Mister Akon purchased the modern-minded residence there were smooth concrete floors throughout the main floor living spaces—most or all of the bedrooms appear to have been carpeted—with a high-ceilinged and sky-lit open plan living/dining area with built-in wet bar, a roomy family room, and an industrial-inspired center island kitchen with commercial-grade appliances.

Akon—born in St. Louis, MO, of Senegalese ancestry with the stunningly lengthy birth name Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Bongo Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiampaid—quickly brought in a team to transform the suburban residence into a series of Miami Beach-y boutique hotel lounge-like spaces melodramatically bathed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling in overlapping layers of blue and purple light.

Mister Akon unveiled the newly rehabbed house in all it's nightclubby—ahem—glory when he hosted his own 40th birthday bash there a few weeks ago and those wily gossip hounds at TMZ managed to get a hold of some post-reno photos. And, children, y'all should listen to Your Mama and go have a look-see at Akon's vision of luxury living. Gurrrl, please. It's all very swah-vay and Las Vegas libidinous—right there in sleepy Woodland Hills!—but, Lowerd have mercy, children, do some people really want to live up in a goddamn VIP section of a nightclub? Not this property gossip, thank you very much.

The tiger-owning R&B/hip hop entertainer and producer appears to be a neophyte real estate baller and owns, according to the always informative and well-researched San Fernando Vally Blog and The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial, at least four or five houses in the Atlanta area. They include a faux-quoined mansion in Alpharetta on 4.6 acres bought in early 2008 for $1,65 million and a big (ugly and ostentatious) 15,000 square foot mansion on 13 acres (above) with 10 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms in Sandy Springs, GA, that was purchased in February 2007 for $2,685,000listing photos (Woodland Hills): Rodeo Realtyaerial image (Alpharetta): Bing

The long-legged blonde gal at Trulia Luxe Living let all us celebrity real estate watchers and gossips know that drop-dead gorgeous actress Eva Mendes sold her starter home just above L.A.'s Sunset Strip for $1,278,630, $9,630 over the asking price.

Moletastic Miss Mendes—who may or may not be engaged to drop-dead gorgeous actor Ryan Gosling—purchased the house with her former man-mate, George Gargurevich, for $584,000 in late 2002. (They split in 2010.)

Listing details show the 1,732 square foot hillside house—the long-legged lady at Trulia Luxe Living called it a "dramatic and downright funky Mid Century home"—has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. There are glittery city views, walls of glass, and several decks that allow for an easy-breezy, classically SoCal indoor-outdoor lifestyle. There's a half-sunken 1970s-style hot tub and built-in banquette seating on the main, lower level deck. Somewhere there's a tiny, raised planter garden area and, below the main deck, a fully secured and very on-trend chicken run.

We're not sure exactly who occupied this house the last few years—Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller—but Your Mama's research on the internets indicates Miz Mendes or maybe Mister Gargurevich decamped long ago to a much more impressive and celebrity pedigreed 1920s Mediterranean villa in the Los Feliz area that was purchased in April 2008 for $3,219,000 and previously owned or occupied according to The Movieland Directory by Red Hot Chili Pepper Chad Smith, comedic actor Paul Rudd,* and Jules Asner, wife of Steven Soderbergh. Listing details from the time of the purchase show the gated and high-hedged property has a 3,779 square foot residence with four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming pool, and a celebrity-style screening room.*Some online resources indicate the Los Feliz property in question was purchased in 2008 by Paul Rudd and that would make him the current owner since 2008 was the last time the property changed hands. And maybe he does own it. We're honestly not quite sure at this point but we're working on that. We do have access to digital resources that say Miz Mendes owns the home and, as was noted by the long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living, Mister Gosling was recently photographed smiling and peeking over the gate and one of Your Mama's better connected sources, Mirakle Mike, told us Miz Mendes has lived in the Los Feliz house in question for quite some time. Make of all that what you will.listing photos: Nourmand & Associates

Hollywood's favorite Oscar-winning New Ager Shirley MacLaine listed her 7,450 acre Plaza Blanca Ranch property outside of Santa Fe NM because, she told the property gossips at The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), she wants to spend more tim in Santa Fe where she bought a house six years ago.*

So the scuttlebutt goes her psychics advised the wonderfully whackadoodle 79-year Tinseltown veteran to list the high desert spread for $30,000,000 but after some numerology hocus-pocus she opted for $18 million because 1+8=9 and nine is some sort of magic number. Anyways...

Miz MacLaine purchased the property, about an hour's drive north of Santa Fe, 20-ish years ago and made many improvements. The approximately 9,000 square foot main house has separate guest quarters and a 4 bedroom underground apartment. There's also a caretaker's cottage, a yurt, a swimming pool, two ponds, a horse barn and various other ranch-related buildings, and a hill top stone spiral that she told the WSJ helps to '"listening to your inner guidance."' (Nutty as that may sound to some, Your Mama could use a good listen to our own internal compass about now but, anyways...)

*Your Mama's research shows the crystal caressing Miz MacLaine's spacious, multi-winged Santa Fe residence sits on nearly five gated acres about 3.5 miles north and east of the Palace of the Governors in downtown Santa Fe and was purchased in mid-2005 for an unknown amount.

First he put it up for lease it for the 2014 summer season at a rate of $150,000. We don't know if there were any takers but now, as the busy real estate beavers at Curbed revealed, CNN silver fox Anderson Cooper listed one of his two, multi-acre creek front properties in the little lauded Hamptons community of Quiogue (NY) up for sale with an asking price of $2.999.

Mister Cooper acquired the five bedroom and 5.5 bathroom shingled ranch-cottage on 2.4 acres in late 2011 for $1.7 million. The seller was the widow of Oscar-winning screenwriter Budd Schulberg who wrote the iconic 1954 film On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando.

What Your Mama wants to know is why Kathy Griffin doesn't buy the damn house just to annoy her the well-born serialgiggler b.f.f. (Don't act like you can't afford it Miss Griffin, ever-body knows you clawed your way from the D list to the B list and you got more money than half of Hollywood, okay?)listing photo: Douglas Elliman Real Estate

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In September 2013, shortly after their long-coming nuptials in June, The Real Housewives of Miami's hot-blooded Polish model Joanna Krupa and her beefy-sexy-swarthy (and some might say smarmy) France-born and Brazil-raised husband, nightclub impresario Romain Zago, shelled out $1,369,000 for a two bedroom and three bathroom condo on the 42nd floor of the much ballyhooed Four Seasons Residences in downtown Miami, FL.

Less than a year later, amid deafening internet whispers and tabloid-y reports that the reality t.v. bigwigs at Bravo canceled the next season of The Real Housewives of Miami (RHOM), the passionate pair flipped the condo back on the market last week (April, 2014) with an asking price of $1.895 million. Within a few days the asking price plumped to its current $1.975 million. With no reality show—and hence no job—there's idle and unconfirmed chatter Miz Krupa—presumably with her man in two—will hightail it back to Los Angeles, her home before she moved to Miami to be with Mister Zago and be on t.v.

Current online marketing materials indicate the 2,139 square foot corner condo was "completely remodeled and updated with high-end finishes," although it's not clear to Your Mama if the renovations were done by Miz Krupa and Mister Zago or a previous owner. Whatever the case, interior fittings and finishes include, as per listing details, four foot square marble slab floors, a name-brand sound system, a water filtration system, electronic window shades, and a state of the art home automation system that allows temperature, sound and lighting systems to be controlled remotely by a smart phone.

Double doors open from the public corridor to a compact vestibule and a long hallway—some real estate agents might try to call it a gallery—that cuts through the apartment at a catty-wompus angle to the main living area. There appears in listing photos to be some sort of built-in entertainment unit and/or wet bar in the north- and west-facing combination living/dining room where Miz Krupa—or her decorator/stager—placed a cushion-y, low-profile taupe-toned sectional sofa and a zebra stripe ottoman in front of nearly floor to ceiling windows filled downtown tower vistas. At the dining room end of the space a glass door opens to an itty-bitty veranda with oblique Biscayne Bay views and just about enough room for two people to stand or sit (or crouch) in intimate proximity.

The kitchen isn't particularly big but is expensively and thoughtfully equipped with modern, flat-fronted cabinets with a rhythmic vertical pattern wood grain, high-gloss ebony counter tops (of unknown material), and top of the line stainless steel appliances that include a built-in microwave. A three-stool breakfast bar separates the kitchen proper from a compact breakfast nook/den area that looks out through the aforementioned veranda to the city and bay views beyond.

Both of the east-facing bedrooms have (windowless) en suite bathroom and the slightly larger master suite has two closets, one of them a decent but hardly huge sized walk-in.

At 789-feet the Four Seasons Miami is currently the tallest building in Florida and the 55th tallest building in the United States. The luxury complex offers its well-heeled residents a separate entrance with dedicated elevators and a residents only swimming pool and lounge so they need not co-mingle fraternize with the hotel guests. Residents are also given some sort of preferred membership at an upscale (and on site) health club but, seriously, children, that's not really a benefit in Your Mama's book since we'd sooner have our gin-sotted liver removed by an apprentice plumber than spend any amount of time in a place that bills itself a "health club." Anyhoo...

As was seen in the last season of the RHOM the couple moved last year or maybe the year before—don't know or care to figure out—to a fairly ordinary single-story bay-front residence in Miami Beach that property records show is not owned by Miz Krupa and/or Mister Zago but rather a corporate entity easily linked to retired Formula 1 race car driver turned Miami-based real estate mogul Eddie Irvine. (Mister Irvine, as it turns out, was sentenced earlier this year to six months in prison for a 2008 brawl in the VIP section of a nightclub in Milan. But we digress.)

Miz Krupa fashioned herself a bit of a real estate mogul on the last season of RHOM and a few peeps and pokes around various property records data bases reveals that in addition to the condo that's up for sale, her property portfolio of includes at least four, quite modest single family homes. While she may own forty fancy houses in Los Angeles the only one Your Mama could tie to the beautiful if blustery model/reality denizen is a humble 2,200-ish square foot ranch-style residence in a perfectly fine if decidedly lackluster area of Encino that she picked up in July 2004 for $670,000. Property records show Miz Krupa owns (at least) three modest homes in the western Chicago suburbs of Glen Ellyn, Villa Park, and Lombard. (The property in Lombard is co-owned with her younger and also fiery sister, Marta.)

NOTE: While Your Mama first heard word about the Krupa-Zagos listing their Miami condo from a gal we'll call E.D. Brickell, it turns out the real estate matter was previously and first discussed by the mad-busy celebrity gossips at Radar. We went with it anyways because, well, for better and worse Your Mama loves us some Real Housewives of... franchise real estate dirt.listing photos and floor plan: Piquet Realty and Radar Online

Monday, April 21, 2014

Several weeks ago there were a couple of tongue wagging reports that international pop music superstar Rihanna, née Robin Fenty, moved into The Fortress, an industrial-edged and aggressively contemporary and much discussed concrete and glass edifice high above the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. And she has, according to several of Your Mama's better connected sources.

Your Mama first (dissed and) discussed the lasciviously muscular and almost cathedral-like residence back in January 2009 when, after nearly two years on the market with a exceedingly optimistic original asking price of $14.995 million, it was sold by (unfortunately named) energy drink entrepreneur Russ Weiner for exactly $8,000,000 to then 29-year old DJ and producer Val Kolton.

A little more than two years later Mister Kolton put the illustrious property, perched prominently a private .6 acre promontory with 270-degree views that sweep across the whole of the Los Angeles basin and often poo-pooed by highly opinionated armchair architecture critics, back up for sale with an also wildly optimistic $12 million asking price. The price eventually tumbled to $8.595 million before Mister Kolton managed to unload the white elephant at a nearly million dollar loss, not counting carrying costs, improvements, and etc., in October 2012 to a still unidentified buyer for $7,212,500.

Listing details from when The Fortress was last available for purchase show there are a total of 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms including a second floor city view master suite with dual bathrooms and a curvaceously walled dressing room plus a detached guest house above the garage with two bedrooms and at least one bathroom.

Other features of note include a 60-foot long, double-height entrance gallery with glass panel roof, several seating nooks, a fireplace and a floating, glass-tread staircase that Your Mama would find terrifying and terrifically difficult to navigate after a few gin and tonics. Along the rear of the residence there's a double-height formal living room traversed overhead by a glass-floored bridge, a much cozier den with built-in entertainment unit, and a double-height library/billiard room.

A couple steps up from the dining room there's an impressive all-stainless steel center island kitchen designed by Porsche Design Group that Your Mama and our eagle-eyed housegurl Svetlana both agree must be a time-consuming and murderous endeavor to keep finger print free or at least reasonably finger print free. Listing details we dug up also indicate there's a spacious screening room with built-in booze bar and candy counter and a fully equipped fitness room filled with angry looking contraptions that Your Mama's fat ass would have no idea how to use.

Outdoor spaces include a gated motor court between the main house and the guest house, a small grassy side yard with unobstructed city views and a koi pond, and, out the rear of the residence, a slender swimming pool and attached 12-person spa that together form a shape luridly similar to the male anatomy.

We have no idea how long Miss Riri plans to reside in The Fortress but iffin we were the betting type—and we're not—we'd bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, the itchy-footed Barbadian will soon move on to another rented residence because, although she's one of the highest earning entertainers on the planet, she doesn't seem to stay anywhere very long typically prefers to rent rather than buy.*

Late 2012 brought an avalanche of reports in the tabs, gossip glossies and property gossip columns that stated the Barbadian singer purchased an approximately 11,000 square foot contemporary in the affluent and somewhat staid, hence unlikely seaside community of Pacific Palisades for $11.9. However, children, a two minute search of public records reveals the property is actually owned by a corporation easily linked to the same non-famous fellow who purchased the property in 2004 for $1.32 and custom built the luxuriously appointed (if woefully specious) residence. **

Last fall, after one too many intruders managed to find their way onto the above mentioned Pac Pal property, Riri packed up her designer duds and hightailed it to New York City where she reportedly rented a $39,000 per month duplex penthouse in SoHo. Listing details and previous reports indicate the sun flooded penthouse was had been listed for $14.6 million and has four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 4,660 square feet of interior space and a 2,400 square foot private terrace.

It was around the time she decamped L.A. for The Big Apple that word got out that Miss Riri had (allegedly) paid around $21.8 million for a 10,000-ish square foot townhouse villa with in Barbados that she'd leased the previous summer (2012) for an unknown amount of money. (Your Mama can not confirm or deny whether Miss Riri actually bought the super-luxe five bedroom and five bathroom or not because we really just don't know but it certainly makes sense she's set down some real estate roots in her homeland.)

In February of this year (2014), for her 26th birthday, the often touring seven-time Grammy winning entertainer was reported to have leased a nearly 19,000 square foot chalet in the celebrity-approved ski haven of Aspen, CO. Some of the features of the massive pseudo-chalet encompasses 7 bedrooms, 11, bathrooms, a 40-foot tall foyer, a five-car garage (with turntable), two elevators, and tennis court with adjacent clubhouse. The house, a short walk into downtown Aspen, is currently listed for $45 million.NOTE: The children ought to keep in mind that listing photos of The Fortress are from the time the house last sold and may or may not reflect the home's current state of decorative affairs.*Miss Riri spent $6.9 million on a newly constructed, 8500+ square foot contemporary in Beverly Hills in September 2009. Just about two years later Miss Riri filed a lawsuit against the property developers that claimed the house was riddled with design and construction defects that allowed water to enter and damage the interior areas. We don't know what became of the lawsuit—and, frankly, we don't much care—but property records show Miss Riri sold the property at a punishing loss, in late 2011, for $5,030,000. In September of 2012 the current owners, presumably after fixing whatever defects allegedly ailed the property, re-listed the property for $9.95 million. After (at least) two failed escrows, the property remains on the open market with a much lower asking price of $7.995 million.**Not long after Riri packed her bags the house went up for lease at $65,000 per month and in late March (2014) the property popped up for sale on the open market with a $14.995 million price tag.listing photos (Los Angeles, The Fortress): The Partners Trustlisting photos (New York): Town Residential (via Streeteasy)listing photos (Barbardos): Chesterton Internationallisting photos (Aspen): Joshua & Co.